The U.N.’s International Civil Service Commission, which decides on the “daily subsistence allowance,” has agreed to raise it for the Amazonian city of Belem

International News via Reuters:

The U.N. will give low-income countries more money to help them attend COP30, the global climate summit set to take place in Brazil this November, in view of soaring accommodation costs in the Amazonian city of Belem.

For months, Brazil has resisted calls to move the conference out of Belem, with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva showing no willingness to backtrack on his promise to present the Amazon rainforest to the world at COP30.

The U.N.’s International Civil Service Commission, which decides on the “daily subsistence allowance,” has agreed to raise it for Belem, after a request from the U.N.’s climate secretariat, a spokesperson for the secretariat told Reuters.

According to a statement released by the Brazilian COP30 presidency, the allowance has been raised to $197, from $144, for 144 developing countries. The allowance covers two or three delegates per country, and 374 delegates in total.

The decision was announced this Wednesday during the third meeting between the UN’s climate body, the UNFCCC, and representatives from Brazil to discuss how to alleviate what has become an acute accommodation crisis, with hotels charging 10 to 15 times their regular rates for the conference period. 

Nearly every government in the world will gather at the annual U.N. summit to negotiate how to curb climate change.

But concerns about logistics, rather than global climate policy, have dominated pre-summit meetings. Developing countries have warned that they cannot afford Belem’s accommodation prices, which have soared amid the shortage of rooms.

Brazil is racing to expand on the 18,000 hotel beds in the coastal city to host the roughly 45,000 people projected to attend COP30. It says developing countries can book more affordable accommodation at daily rates of up to $220.

Less than two months before the conference, only 79 countries have made reservations through the official COP30 platform or through other means, and 70 are still in negotiations, according to the Brazilian government. The annual COP negotiations usually involve nearly 200 countries.

Reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu, in Brasilia; additional reporting by Kate Abnett, in Brussels, editing by Philippa Fletcher

The San Francisco-based company has invited banks including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley to pitch for roles on the IPO

International News via Reuters:

Strava, the popular fitness tracking platform, is looking to hire investment banks for its U.S. initial public offering, people familiar with the matter said.

The San Francisco-based company, valued at $2.2 billion in a funding round completed in May, has invited banks including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley to pitch for roles on the IPO, the people said, asking not to be identified because the matter is confidential.

That financing round was led by Sequoia Capital, Square Ventures, TCV and Go4it Capital Partners, according to PitchBook.

Strava did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and Morgan Stanley declined to comment.

Founded in 2009, Strava operates a mobile application with more than 150 million active users it calls athletes across 185 countries, according to its website. By combining social networking with fitness, it rose to popularity during the pandemic, allowing users to measure and share their workouts, give “kudos” to friends and see how they stack up against elite athletes.

The listing could happen as soon as early 2026, depending on market conditions, the sources said. Strava has yet to finalize how much it plans to raise and the valuation it will seek for the IPO, the sources added.

The company, whose founders Michael Horvath and Mark Gainey met as members of Harvard University’s crew team, hired a chief financial officer last month, a move often seen as a step toward an IPO.

U.S. IPO market activity increased last week, with six deals raising more than $4 billion in the busiest period since 2021.

Reporting by Echo Wang in Palo Alto, California, Milana Vinn in New York; Editing by Dawn Kopecki and Richard Chang

Researchers said the fossil represents a juvenile of a previously unknown species they have named Zavacephale rinpoche

International News via Reuters:

Pachycephalosaurs, two-legged plant eaters known for their bony dome-shaped skulls, are among the quirkiest dinosaurs known, and also among the least understood. A fossil found peeking out of a cliffside in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia – the oldest and most complete of any dinosaur from this group – is now changing that.

Researchers said the fossil represents a juvenile of a previously unknown species they have named Zavacephale rinpoche (pronounced zah-vah-SEF-al-ay rin-POH-shay), dating to about 108 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period. This individual was small and lightly built, with long legs, short arms and small hands – comparable in size overall to a German shepherd.

Very little is known about pachycephalosaurs (pak-ee-SEF-al-oh-sors), a group that inhabited Asia and North America during the final period of the age of dinosaurs, with the fossils known until now generally being quite incomplete – sometimes with just the skull.

The Zavacephale specimen, however, is largely complete, providing the first comprehensive look at the anatomy of these dinosaurs. Zavacephale also is the oldest of any known pachycephalosaur by approximately 15 million years.

This Zavacephalee individual was at least two years old at the time of death. Even though it was not fully grown – the equivalent of a human teenager – it already had a well-developed cranial dome, made up of thickened bone atop the skull. This feature in Zavacephale differed a bit from those of pachycephalosaurs from later in the Cretaceous. In Zavacephale, the dome was formed mostly by a single skull bone. In later pachycephalosaurs, it was formed mostly by two bones.

Zavacephale exhibited ornamentation accompanying the dome in the form of small spikes and nodes that encircled the dome and the back of its skull.

The researchers determined the individual’s age by examining growth rings in the limb bones, akin to the annual growth rings formed in trees. The study was the first to use growth rings to identify when in the life of a pachycephalosaur the cranial dome fully develops.

The dome’s purpose remains a matter of debate. Scientists among other things have hypothesized that these dinosaurs butted heads – with dome-on-dome collisions – like bighorn sheep, perhaps to establish dominance and secure mating rights.

“The consensus is that these dinosaurs used the dome for socio-sexual behaviors. The domes wouldn’t have helped against predators or for temperature regulation, so they were most likely for showing off and competing for mates,” said paleontologist Lindsay Zanno of North Carolina State University and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, senior author of the study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.

“Were they for head-butting, grappling or just showing off?” Zanno asked. “At the end of the day, you have to hand it to pachycephalosaurs. When it comes to flashy headgear, they didn’t phone it in.”

A completely formed dome on a juvenile indicates that pachycephalosaurs engaged in social and likely mating behaviors before becoming fully grown, Zanno said.

Adults of the largest pachycephalosaurs, like the later Pachycephalosaurus from North America, could grow to around 14 feet long (4.3 meters), though adults of Zavacephale may have been less than half of that length.

The environment in which Zavacephale lived was a valley dotted with lakes and surrounded by cliffs. The remains of multiple other plant-eating dinosaurs have been found nearby as well as various fish, turtles and croc relatives.

The name Zavacephale combines the Tibetan word for “origin” with the Latin word for “head,” owing to the fact that this species is the earliest-known example of dome-headed dinosaurs.

“Before Zavacephale, our record of pachycephalosaurs was almost exclusively limited to their indestructible domes. With such scanty skeletons, we were left with holes in our knowledge of their anatomy, including basic things like what their arms would have looked like, how their digestive system functioned and how the cranial dome evolved over time,” Zanno said. 

The fossil preserved gastroliths, the stomach stones that helped the dinosaur grind the plants it ate.

Scientists are trying to figure out the evolutionary ancestry of pachycephalosaurs.

“We’ve been missing transitional forms that can shed light on how their bizarre cranial domes evolved and resolve their relationships to other dinosaurs,” Zanno said.

Reporting by Will Dunham in Washington, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien

Ben & Jerry’s – founded by Cohen and Greenfield in a renovated gas station in 1978 – was acquired by Unilever in 2000 for $326 million in a deal

International News via Reuters:

Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Jerry Greenfield, part of the duo whose names shaped the popular ice cream brand over the last half century, has quit the company after a rift and public feud with parent Unilever over the conflict in Gaza.

In an open letter shared by his partner Ben Cohen on social media platform X, Greenfield said that the Vermont-based company – well-known for its social activism – had in recent years been “silenced” by Unilever, which is currently spinning off its Magnum ice cream unit that includes the Ben & Jerry’s brand.

“It’s with a broken heart that I’ve decided I can no longer, in good conscience, and after 47 years, remain an employee of Ben & Jerry’s,” wrote Greenfield, 74, who had taken on a brand ambassador role at the firm.

“Standing up for values like justice, equity, and shared humanity has never been more important, yet Ben & Jerry’s has been silenced and sidelined for fear of upsetting those in power.”

DISPUTE OVER GAZA, SOCIAL VALUES

A spokesperson for the Magnum Ice Cream Company, Unilever’s ice cream unit, said that it “disagrees with Greenfield’s perspective and has sought to engage both co-founders in a constructive conversation on how to strengthen Ben & Jerry’s powerful values-based position in the world.”

Unilever shares were unmoved on Wednesday. Unilever did not respond to a request for comment.

Ben & Jerry’s – founded by Cohen and Greenfield in a renovated gas station in 1978 – was acquired by Unilever in 2000 for $326 million in a deal that included a unique clause allowing the brand to maintain its own independent board of directors with authority over its social mission, though not over operations.

However, Unilever and Ben & Jerry’s have clashed since 2021, when the Chubby Hubby ice cream maker said it would stop sales in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The brand has since sued its parent over alleged efforts to silence it and described the Gaza conflict as “genocide”, a rare stance for a major U.S. company.

Magnum said Greenfield had stepped down as a brand ambassador and that he was not a party to the lawsuit.

Greenfield’s departure comes as the Ben & Jerry’s founders have been calling for its own spin-off ahead of a planned listing of Magnum Ice Cream in November.

Last week Cohen held a protest in London as the new Magnum Ice Cream Company presented its growth plans, demanding Unilever “free Ben & Jerry’s” to protect its social values. That was rebuffed by new Magnum CEO Peter ter Kulve. Cohen notably did not announce he was also stepping down on Wednesday.

Greenfield said he would keep up his social fight from outside the company as he couldn’t do so from inside.

“It was always about more than just ice cream — it was a way to spread love and invite others into the fight for a better world,” he said.

Reporting by Shivani Tanna and Gursimran Kaur in Bengaluru; Writing by Linda Pasquini; Editing by Adam Jourdan, Harikrishnan Nair, Nivedita Bhattacharjee, Muralikumar Anantharaman, Aidan Lewis

The European Commission identified fragile supply chains and heavy reliance on Asian manufacturers, especially for essential drugs such as antibiotics and painkillers, as key causes

International News via Reuters:

Europeans remain at risk of running short of medicines, including common antibiotics and other vital treatments, a European Court of Auditors report showed Wednesday.

The European Commission identified fragile supply chains and heavy reliance on Asian manufacturers, especially for essential drugs such as antibiotics and painkillers, as key causes, the ECA said.

In July, European crisis chief Hadja Lahbib said the EU aims to stockpile critical medical equipment and vaccines in case of future health crises and to create a network to improve coordination among member states.

But the ECA warned that stockpiling in some countries could worsen medical shortages elsewhere in the bloc.

Shortages peaked in 2023 and 2024, with EU countries running critically short of 136 medicines between January 2022 and October 2024, the report said.

ECA said the shortages are a “chronic headache for the EU,” with the bloc still lacking a “well‑oiled system” for addressing severe medicine shortages.

Auditors found the system to prevent drug shortages lacked a solid legal framework and timely information, with the European Medicines Agency, the region’s drug regulator, having limited powers outside health crises.

“Medicine shortages can have severe consequences for patients, compromise public health and come at a high cost for doctors, pharmacies and countries alike,” said Klaus Heiner Lehne, the ECA member leading the audit.

Regulatory barriers in the EU’s medicine market hinder cross-border redistribution, worsening drug shortages and unequal access, the report said.

The Commission has proposed legal changes that aim to cut reliance on countries such as China and India and, once passed, could significantly improve the system, the report added.

Reporting by Christy Santhosh in Bengaluru; Editing by Tasim Zahid